


Energon Generator

by Redfire_Dragon



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Bizarre biology, Casual cruelty, Horror, How many years?, I am lost, If you aren't one of us you aren't really a person, Lost - Freeform, Pushed to the limit, Putting you in the mind, The hopeless, The pain never stops, Then really really far past it, Time has lost all meaning, Torture, Why did I go to Cybertron?, regenerative powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 01:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11116599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redfire_Dragon/pseuds/Redfire_Dragon
Summary: "Knowing my powers, any other species would have used me as a source of energy." An echo in her mind of words once spoken. Her words, she had said them, in a different place in a different time. A memory had once been connected to the words. The memory itself was gone but the knowing it had been a different race she had spoken of remained. Now the same could never be said of the Cybertronians.





	Energon Generator

Iron banded her body, a metal cage welded around her entombing her like a mummy. There was no escape. There was no give to the metal bars. Yet again she strained, muscles tensed to the point of tearing, trying to... to... to what? Get free? Her sluggish mind churned trying to come up with an answer as muscles and tendons clenched in a slow rythm of abused agony. Yes, to get free, that had been the original goal. She had fought, first with hope then with fear that turned to terror. Then came desperation, oh the desperation. Frantic, maddening, desperate struggles to find the slightest give in the metal that surrounded her, the tiniest anything on which to hang a shred of hope. Finally the despair, complete and utter. That was when they had hooked her up to that machine that breathed for her, pumping air in and out of her lungs. Keeping her alive against her will. They hadn't wanted to lose their precious captive after all. She was too valuable.

Now though she had somehow moved beyond the despair, not by dint of effort but simply dragged there by relentless time. Now the movements, the straining of strength and sinew, were automatic, systematic responses that had gone beyond mere habit or ritual. They just happened, sometimes active sometimes not. Time no longer had meaning or even existed really, there was only the pain and the being trapped to her world. Her mind had lost the ability to truly think anymore as well, even now, even this, was just rote pattern. A grove of thought worn into what remained of her mind. Her mind would start at the beginning, wind its way through the sequence of ideas and impressions. Not a mind anymore really, just a thread of pseudo-consciousness, following the same rote pattern beginning to end then drifting back into a stupor until it started once again. There was no time. Only pain. Only suffering.

A tube went down her throat, another besides the breathing one. The one was larger and had come first, entering through her mouth and reaching down into her. There was a name. A feeding tube. That was what it was called. There used to be emotions attached to that, to this the primary cause of her suffering. Those emotions were gone, there was only the pain as it slowly pumped organic matter into her. That was her purpose here. Organic matter was pumped in, Energon was pumped out. Her internals screamed with the constant pain of converting the raw materials into energy. Too much they screamed. Too fast they screamed. But the pump kept running and running and running her screaming system into the ground. This was her purpose here. Organic matter was pumped in, Energon was pumped out. A living converter, a generator, of that most precious of resources.

"Knowing my powers, any other species would have used me as a source of energy." An echo in her mind of words once spoken. Her words, she had said them, in a different place in a different time. A memory had once been connected to the words. The memory itself was gone but the knowing it had been a different race she had spoken of remained. Now the same could never be said of the Cybertronians.

Many of her teeth had been removed to make way for the feeding tube. Then her jaw had been wired shut around it, then her lips sewn closed around it. No motion, no movement allowed. Did she have a tongue anymore to try to shift the tube? She couldn't tell. It had probably been removed but she couldn't tell.

Sometimes they would shut the pump off, let her system rest a little, recuperate, reform. The pain never stopped, the breaks were never long enough to truly heal. There was no time, only pain, only suffering. But when they shut off the pump in, they shut off the pump out, off the machines on her extended arm.

For their own ease they had removed her right hand, allowing direct access to the major artery in her wrist. The stub had been capped with metal with a tube extending from the severed artery. This tube held a diverter allowing the fluid that ran through her to be pumped out or redirected back in through a tube connected to a major vein in her capped wrist. While the rest of her body was bound together by the steel cage, her right arm was extended out to the side at a slight slope, though it was just as immobilized as the rest of her. Between shoulder and wrist devices and machines had been attached. They did things, electric shocks, radiation, exposure to chemicals, she couldn't remember the details. It was all pain and damage, especially the radiation, that never fully went away. But the Result was to force the power running through her, her very lifeblood, to change into pure energon by the time it left the artery at her wrist.

All that pain and suffering, just to produce energon. They called it Org-En, organic energon, as it was manufactured from organic materials. But how it was manufactured was a closely guarded secret. And so they had grown rich off of her suffering; her body, her strange and delicate systems, reduced to a machine to manufacture that precious substance and line their coffers with gold.

Always the machines were running, pumping in, pumping out, pumping in, pumping out. Except when they weren't. Without a sense of time though there was no sense when it would start and increase her agony and when it would stop and the pain would change to that of desperate internal repairs with all the energy it could manage to redirect to healing. She had a sense that even before she had lost her sense of time there had been no pattern to the on off cycles of the machines. All was dictated by the whims of her captors.

Even when the machines were off she was not free from their cruelty. That was when they came at her with knives and blades, with things that burned or shocked or speared. Spinning blades or delicate scalpels they came after her, toying with her, teasing her, exploring her anatomy as they relished her pain. Their voices sharp and mocking as they cut or gouged or sent electrical pulses through her that spasmed her tortured muscles so hard they tore. Her clothes were tattered or cut away over their favorite places; her left arm, her legs, her abdomen, her back. They had cut into her and taken away. Liver, kidneys, gall bladder, appendix, just about anything other than her heart or lungs or stomach. Those were necessary for production, they were always left alone, and they never bothered her ribcage anyway. Sometimes they would play with the removed organs, obscene games of keep-away and the like, just for the added horror, before feeding the organs into the machine that ground up organic matter to be pumped back into her. Other times they didn't remove, just stabbed and sliced, destroying with blades and blunt instruments or searing her flesh with white hot metal or welding torches.

It didn't matter what they did, she always healed, always regenerated. That was what her body was designed to do, adapted to do. No matter what life threw at her, what injury was inflicted on her, she would heal as good as new. But this pain, this suffering, this entrappment. No rest, no help, no hope. Perfect regeneration was failing, her systems stressed and overworked. Nothing could fully heal and be made whole once more. Scars littered once smooth skin, knit together unevenly where cruel claws had torn unprotected flesh. She wondered if there was any blood left in her to bleed or if only energon seeped from her wounds now. Her body could function with only energon flowing through her veins, not happily but it could, she could remember that from the before time, not the memory itself but that it had been so. Her organs no longer regenerated, were any left besides the three her captors considered necessary? A bag that changed organic matter into energon, swollen and distended by abuse. A bag for the air that was forcibly pumped in and out by a machine, forcing her to continue living. And her heart, thumping and throbbing with a dirge like beat. Was that all that was left inside her now?

Was there any blood on her wounds? She could not turn her head to see if the color was red or purple or pure energon blue. It probably wouldn't matter anyway, her eyes had been put out so many times, so very many times. They had long ceased to regenerate properly and she had lost all vision in her left eye quite a while ago. Her right eye, while not entirely blind, had been so badly and repeatedly damaged that the optic nerve had split and branched, sending not one image but a great many, as overlapping shards like a shattered mirror, like looking at the world through a shattered lens, or perhaps a shattered mind.

A shattered mind, a shattered eye, a shattered body. No escape, no help, no hope. Only pain. Only suffering. And yet...

And yet...

And yet there had been a change. A flickering of true consciousness awoke in her mind. A discrepancy to the unending sameness of her suffering. What had it been? A change, the machines, her arm. Her tormentors had come and adjusted the machines. They had played with them a number of times lately. Most recently there had been a more serious change. Her mind, weakened by torture and confinement, struggled to recall the painful details. Settings on the machines had been changed altering the nature of the energon being pumped out of her. They had sampled it, a little at first then more, their behavior becoming more erratic. They had laughed and joked and spoken words she was in too much pain to comprehend. Then they had carved words into her flesh and laughed at the results. They never played their games of physical harm while the machines were running, while she was producing for them. Never until now. Her frame shuddered, muscles contorting, fighting one another and the encircling metal. Something had changed. Change, difference, variation. The endless mind-numbing monotonous agony had changed. Big and sudden. Was it enough? Had time started again? She was too far gone to feel something as bright as hope but there was a glimmer of... something. A subtle stirring of soul.

The new avenue of thought explored her mind fell back into its rut of repeated thought patterns, following the groove to its end then drifting back into the stupor of agony that was her base state, ruined eyes staring straight ahead.

Later there were sounds, but that was not enough to wake her from her stupor. There were sounds before her tormentors entered the place she was kept. Sounds changed, varied, but the result was always the same, pain. Her muscles began seizing, the habitual fight against her bonds resurfacing. Ears registered sounds of fighting and the body responded though the mind did not. The body remembered fighting, it had fought and battled for ages untold, it did not need the mind to recognize the class of blades, banging of metal fists, firing of blasters.

The door to the warehouse was abruptly torn from its hinges with a shriek of metal. Her body jerked a thread of consciousness stirring. Different, pattern broken. The sound did not fit. Figures rushed in, they did not fit either, swift, alert, furtive. Wrong shape, wrong size, not her captors. The pattern was broken, discrepancies again. Had time started again?

"Primus... what have they done to you?" That voice, she felt it echoing in her ears. Were they damaged or was she just hearing it twice, once from the outside, once from the inside. That voice was from the past, when time still moved. Could... maybe...

"Ratchet... Ratchet, Oh Primus what is... Oh Primus Ratchet can you help her?" There were other voices piping up, speaking, but they fell into tinny background noise while this was the second to stand out. Another voice from the past. Something spasmed inside her. Friends, these were the voices of friends. Conclusion: Time had started again. Change was coming, was here with horrified voices and worried optics.

"I... I can certainly help Bee." The first voice rumbled and a large frame approached. Her body cringed back instinctively, those who approached caused pain, but her soul stirred as if reaching forward. Ruined eyes prickled with pain and her sight blurred as massive metal hands reached out to tear her iron prison apart. "Bumblebee, shut down all the machines and help me get them off her." Her spasming body fell forward into gentle hands that carefully restrained her as it became obvious she could not control the jerking limbs beating against everything. Her poor vision was failing her entirely now, blurred till all was smudged. Then her eyes blinked and cleared, a surprise, there was a name for this.

"She's... she's crying."

"With the shape she's in are you really surprised?" Crying, that was the word, and she realized the two bots overhead were crying too, lubricant glistening in bright blue optics. Friends, her friends, crying, crying for her. They'd come to rescue her. She was safe, she was free, her tormentors were gone at last. One by one the machines were removed and the delicate machinery destroyed with a systematic brutality that brought relief to her spirit if not her ravaged body. Only the breathing machine remained, as they discovered she could not breathe without it, and the feeding tube was carefully carefully pulled out. Her lips bled, her mouth bled, her throat bled, but she was free of the unending pushing of the pump. The pain was still there, and it would be a long time to heal but time was moving again, she would be allowed to heal. Relief flicked inside her, a fragile warming flame.

A huge but gentle finger reached out and stroked the side of her face comfortingly. "I'm sorry it took so long for us to find you. You're safe now Scarlet. We'll take care of you. I promise."

"We all will." The smaller bot said. All she could make out was a color, yellow. That was important and she couldn't remember why. But there was time in her world once again. Time to remember. Time to heal. Time to live once again.


End file.
